Beware that the SVM Gift Cards seller on eBay is now coming through as a cash advance on most credit cards.
Many reports are coming in within the past few days of people who got charged a cash advance fee on their Visa and Mastercard for an SVM purchase, across many different card issuers. I believe Amex cards are safe (personal experience), and we don’t yet have data points about Discover.
Sometime on February 8th or 9th, SVM changed their merchant category code from “Services Not Elsewhere Classified” to “Prepaid and Stored.” The new coding is coming through as a cash advance which has fees and doesn’t earn points.
The new code is showing on Amex cards too (as indicated in the screenshots above), but Amex isn’t considering it a cash advance while other banks are.
I imagine this will be fixed quickly. If they don’t refund you, be sure to leave them bad feedback. Others have already done that.
If you did get hit with a cash advance fee, you might want to quickly pay down your balance in case it can’t be reversed. Otherwise, interest starts accruing immediately.
In the olden days, the advice in similar circumstances was to pay with an eBay gift card – something no longer possible. Now, my only advise is to use an Amex card. Or use a Paypal balance or checking account if you don’t have an Amex. You can also try using a Visa or Mastercard which has it’s cash advance level set to $0, but there’s a good chance the transaction won’t go through.
Hat tip to @milesperday
